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Tuesday, July 15, 2008

Scandal: Former Lebanese Minister Represents Assad

NOWLebanon reveals that former Lebanese Information Minister Michel Samaha may have even represented Syria during meetings with an advisor to Lebanese President Michel Sleiman:

... Samaha in fact ran Assad’s media campaign in Paris and .

... “Who is his president? That is the question. These are Syria’s people in Lebanon,” Salam said. “I think it’s some sort of a message that our people are our people, and we are imposing them on the Lebanese.”

... “If indeed [Samaha] comes up in France, that’s very telling in terms of how Syria is telling Sleiman it deals with him,” he said. “It’s very telling that at the time Sleiman goes there in order to discuss sovereign diplomatic relations and border demarcations, i.e., normal state-to-state relations, the way they deal with him is [through] one of their subordinates. Basically [saying], ‘The way we deal with Lebanon is not through state institutions, but through our channels, our select channels, and you fall in line.’”

The last paragraph, in the quoted portion above, gives a clear indication as to why this issue is such a scandal.

Under different circumstances, say a meeting between Lebanon and a country which respected our sovereignty and/or didn't have a [very recent] history of occupying Lebanon and/or conducting a violent assassination campaign and/or controlling violent armed terrorist groups throughout Lebanon and/or ... well, you get the point ... under different circumstances I don't think it would've been such a big deal that Samaha would have handled Assad's media arrangements.

His representation on behalf of Assad in meetings with Lebanese officials is, as the articles' commentators accurately point out, a less than innocent breach of protocol. There is a message here and that is a message of infiltration and domination.